


Of Dragons and Lions

by FireWithinMidnight



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
Genre: Dragon dreams, Gen, I hope, Joanna Lannister Lives, No Ending, One Shot, Some OOC ahead, Wut if Tyrion Targaryen, stuff blows up, with a small twist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:14:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26702005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireWithinMidnight/pseuds/FireWithinMidnight
Summary: Tyrion Lannister being born a dwarf was, after all, the least problem of House Lannister.
Relationships: Cersei Lannister/Jaime Lannister, Joanna Lannister/Tywin Lannister
Comments: 1
Kudos: 19





	Of Dragons and Lions

**Author's Note:**

> One poster proposed this theory one time too many on another website, so I ended up picking it up to get it out of my brain. Of course, I took so much time writing this that said user has since got banned.
> 
> Personally, I don't believe this theory to be true. Tyrion being his father's son is a huge part of his character arc, and we don't need another surprise Targaryen. That said, in the bizarre case it turns out to be true, I'll not acknowledge it because c'on, really?

What should have been a jubilant day was turning into a dark day at Casterly Rock.

After a tumultuous pregnancy, Lady Joanna Lannister’s labour was showing itself to be just as perilous. Maester Dustran, midwives, handmaidens, and a veritable horde of healers fluttered in and out the birthing chamber, bringing foul poultices, drenched towels, dirty clothes, and Joanna’s screams of pain with her. A few dozed in the hallway, strewn across the floor like the dolls Cersei discarded after growing bored of them.

The light had long sunk into the sea, but Lord Tywin stood indefatigable, willing servants to move with his glare alone, while Jaime and Cersei sat silently in each other’s embrace. Ser Kevan had tried to comfort them, but his niece and nephew were insensible to his words. Gerion had taken his older brother’s place when day turned to dusk and wasn’t met with success either.

Then, as abrupt as the labour had begun, the wail of a newborn baby started reverberating in the air.

Jaime and Cersei jumped to their feet and would have dashed for the door if Tywin hadn’t ordered them to remain where they stood. Maester Dustran emerged from the chamber, his balding head bowed in sign of respect and his hands wringing the cloth of his vestment.

Maester Dustran cleared his throat. “Lord Tywin, there’s a situation with the baby.”

\---

“Where’s my son...?”

Joanna’s voice was faint and scratchy like never before. Each word was a dagger to her aching throat. Her lord husband sat at her side and caressed her pale hand, but she couldn’t feel his touch on her numbed skin.

“Tywin...”

His head snapped up. His stern expression had her heart flutter in apprehension. The labour had been beyond painful; more than once she had despaired of her incoming death. She had almost given in to the encroaching darkness when the babe finally slid down between her legs.

She had cried out in relief then and wished to see her thirdborn. Instead, Maester Dustran and the midwives had immediately absconded with the wailing newborn.

Joanna gulped, trying to soothe her throat, and repeated her question. Tywin stared at her like he couldn’t comprehend her request, before turning and nodding at a servant who had been hiding in a shadowed corner. Slowly, a bundle of red and golden swaddling was laid in Joanna’s arms and the blankets moved aside for her to see.

Her breath hitched at the sight of short limbs and the foretelling signs of a jutting forehead. The delicate features, the small nose, and the gently pouting mouth couldn’t cover the damning facts. Her son was a dwarf.

That was when she saw the tuft of silver hair sprouting on his head, and the purple and green eyes sleepily peeking at her from under fluttering eyelids.

Joanna knew that shade of hair quite well. She had been Queen Rhaella’s lady-in-waiting for many years and had threaded her fingers through that same silky, silver hair for months on end until she was exiled from court, least King Aerys II made her his unwilling mistress.

She turned to her husband. Tywin was assessing her, jaw strongly set as he had been wont to whenever Lord Tytos had brought further shame to House Lannister. She would have clutched the infant to her bosom had she had the strength to do so.

“I have known no men but you, my lord husband,” she replied to his unvoiced question. She poured all her conviction in her weak voice.

Tywin stared back, unblinking, before the corners of his eyes relaxed minutely.

“I believe you,” he said. The nascent knot in her heart dissolved into relief. “My brother has already taken the liberty of commenting that he has my eye.”

Joanna had no need to ask which brother of his had acted impertinently toward her husband. How long had she laid there, unresponsive? She peered instantly at her son’s eyes. “He does,” she noticed. Her golden twins had inherited her emerald eyes instead.

She squeezed her eyes shut, confused emotions battling within her mind. She couldn’t pick any of them. Her son was alive and in apparent good health, yet he would be a stunted thing for the rest of his life. Then, there was the evident proof that the blood of the dragon flowed through his veins.

“Nobody can know,” she realized all of the sudden. She knew the truth and so did her husband, but that wouldn’t matter to smallfolk and to lesser lords envious of their power. She would become a treacherous adulteress to their eyes. Tywin would be mocked as a lord cuckolded by his lady wife. Their child would be branded a bastard.

“Nobody will,” Tywin eyed his swaddled son speculatively. “There are dyes from Essos that cannot be washed by anything but time. The eye can be covered-”

The baby started crying. Nothing else was discussed on the matter that day.

\---

Tongues wagged to nobody’s surprise. They called Tyrion “Tywin’s bane” and “doom”. They saw his birth as a sign of incoming war, famine, and plague. King Aerys declared his stunted form to be Tywin’s punishment from the Seven for having dared to raise himself above his station. Joanna was side-eyed by her own ladies-in-waiting whenever they believed she wasn’t paying attention.

Nobody spoke of silver hair. No rumour of passing a bastard for legitimate arose.

Unfortunately, Joanna would bear no more children. Maester Dustran confirmed that the infection she had contracted toward the end of her pregnancy, which had convinced Tywin to recruit a veritable company of healers to ensure her continued health, had robbed her womb of the ability to quicken. Tyrion’s surprisingly strong constitution was a miracle.

Joanna was of the opinion that the Seven had a twisted sense of humour for granting a miracle to a dwarf. Tywin agreed. Some days, they were unsure if they were grateful for it or not.

\---

Scant a few weeks after Tyrion’s birth, the second prince and the princess of Dorne docked at Lannisport, chaperoned by a large host of loyal guardsmen. Neither Prince Doran Martell nor Princess Loreza were visiting, busy as they were ensuring a smooth transition of power after the death of the previous patriarch of House Martell. Nonetheless, Prince Oberyn and Princess Elia had landed in the Westerlands with a burning desire to see the newest Lannister.

The tales running among the streets and alleys were even more extravagant than those Tywin and Joanna knew. They talked of a monster with genitals of both genders; of a long, pointy tail growing between Tyrion’s legs; of stunted wings that had shredded his back bloody; of an evil eye that must be covered at all times least it cursed the family for generations to come.

Both princelings expressed their wish to meet Tyrion to see if the hearsay had any merit. They were soundly denied by the Lord and Lady of Casterly Rock. Thus, Oberyn asked Cersei and Jaime about the fabled creature while the twins showed the Lannister ancestral seat to him and Elia.

Cersei shrugged. “It’s a baby,” she grimaced, “an ugly baby,” she added, looking on in the distance.

Jaime coughed awkwardly.

“How ugly?” Oberyn leaned forward conspiratorially, but the glint in his eye had grown faint. An ugly infant was nothing extraordinary. There were plenty of them in Dorne.

“His limbs are short and wrinkly, his forehead constantly tries to run away,” Cersei answered bored. “He eats, sleeps, and soils himself. That’s all he does.”

“Cersei!” Jaime whispered, or tried to, as Oberyn and Elia heard his hasty reproach.

Elia clapped her hands together. She struggled to keep an affable smile. “Still, I’d like to meet Lady Joanna’s youngest son...”

“No!” Jaime shouted, jumping between Cersei and Oberyn, “father… Father doesn’t want anybody but the wet nurse to see Tyrion. He’s… Frail of health,” he blurted lamely, “father doesn’t want to risk him contracting any illness.”

Oberyn’s eyes shone at the obvious lie, and Elia had to suppress an exasperated sigh.

Later that night, the princelings easily slipped away from their assigned guest rooms, and the next night too. They navigated through the endless hallways in search of the nursery, and, when they finally found it, Oberyn easily distracted the droopy and sleepy guard away from his post.

Entering through the now-unguarded door, they spotted a wetnurse snoring on a feathered bed next to a wooden cot shaped in the guise of a roaring lion. They crept closer to it and peeked inside.

Oberyn almost gasped- would have gasped if Elia hadn’t slapped his mouth closed. She understood and shared his surprise; the infant in the cot stared at them with wide, curious mismatched eyes of purple and green, and a mop of silver hair that shimmered under the moonlight. Under their bemused gazes, Tyrion blew a bubble and started wriggling his tiny limbs as if he was eager to be picked up.

Cooing softly, Elia took him from the crib and brought him in the crook of her arms, where he nestled his head against her bosom. “He’s beautiful,” she murmured.

Oberyn flicked one of the silver bangs growing on the infant’s head. “That certainly explains why Lord Tywin doesn’t want anybody to see his second son,” he said elated, his eyes shining dangerously, “He has the Targaryen looks.”

Elia nodded pensively. “I… Don’t think he’s Aerys’s though,” she added, “Lord Tywin wouldn’t claim a bastard as his own, would he? And Lady Joanna…”. Joanna didn’t have the semblance of a lady who would shamelessly betray her husband, not with the gentle love and respect Oberyn and Elia’s hosts showed one another.

“Probably not,” Oberyn conceded with a pout. Then, he grinned. “But it’s better than an ugly baby. Not as good as an actual forked tail between his legs, though.”

They stayed in the nursery for a few more minutes; Elia rocked the baby and mumbled soft words to him until Tyrion fell asleep again. They returned to their assigned bedrooms and didn’t ask about the baby or visit the nursery for the rest of the visit.

In the end, no betrothal was decided. Oberyn found Cersei to be a bore while she thought he was too scandalous and dornish. Elia and Jaime got along well, but Elia suffered from a sudden malaise that left her bedridden, which was not well received by Tywin. Joanna was disappointed, but she consoled herself with the fact that House Martell and House Lannister still considered each other friends.

\---

Time passed, the children grew up, and the fortunes of House Lannister were tested both from the outside and the inside.

The tourney Tywin had organized to honour Prince Viserys’s birth revealed how much his friendship with King Aerys had eroded. The King rudely refused a match between Rhaegar and Cersei, leading to the royal party to depart abruptly without attending the closing feast and ceremony.

Cersei smarted from King Aerys’s refusal. Tywin had acted rashly when he had promised her that she would be queen; unfortunately, by the time Tywin and Joanna had a talk on the matter, Cersei was adamantly sure that she would marry Rhaegar and refused any other match that was presented before her. She became more and more willful until the guards found her trying to abscond from her duties in order to visit some woodwitch and have her future divined.

Yet, her infatuation for the dragon prince didn’t stop her from cavorting with Jaime.

Tywin hadn’t wanted to believe Joanna at first. She couldn’t fault him; if anybody had dared to insinuate that her twins could be so foolish and shameful, she would have had their head. The truth had sunk in when the additional watchers had discovered Jaime sneaking into Cersei’s bedroom at the hour of the wolf. In the aftermath, Jaime was soon to squire at House Brax while Cersei was to stay at Casterly Rock under Joanna’s careful eye.

Jaime had tried to dissolve the coming fostering. He had cried and whined and said that the Targaryens were allowed to wed their own sisters, all the while conspicuously looking at an oblivious Tyrion, who had been more interested in knocking over the wooden knights he was playing with. Tywin had dragged Jaime to the solar by the ear and the pair hadn’t emerged until night had truly fallen on Casterly Rock.

Tyrion too presented challenges of his own. Already a dwarf the servants presumed they didn’t have to look after until Joanna put a stop to their blatant disrespect, personal oddities started to emerge as he conquered his words and letters. Oddities he had no problems expressing whenever he wanted, like during the small, private feast celebrating his fourth nameday.

“I dreamed dragons today,” Tyrion stated innocently, picking at the red patch that covered his purple eye.

A mantle of silence descended upon the hall and the people present. Tywin’s younger siblings had exchanged uneasy glances among them, while Cersei laid her fork with an amused smile playing on her lips, and Jaime watched on with his mouth hanging open and a morsel of pheasant half-way in. Tywin cleaned his mouth with a cloth. “Tyrion,” he called without raising his voice. It was enough to make the small child wince. “What have I told you about your fanciful dreams?”

Tyrion ducked his head guiltily. “...To keep them to myself.”

“Indeed. I believe it’s time for you to retire to your rooms. The hour is growing late, and you have lessons tomorrow.”

Joanna rose from Tywin’s side, ignoring Gerion’s protests on the matter, and gently lifting Tyrion out of his elevated chair. They were out of the dining hall before Tyrion let a choked sob escape as tears formed in his eyes. “Why?” he blubbered inelegantly. “Why does father hate my dreams?”

“They’re dangerous,” Joanna replied sharply. It wasn’t the first time Tyrion let his so-called dragon dreams slip, and she had quickly run out of patience on the matter. It was made worse by the fact that, by Maester Creylen’s praises, Tyrion was smarter than this. Yet, he insisted on being as insensible as Cersei was when she wasn’t carefully coached.

“But I sawed them!” Tyrion insisted in spite of Joanna’s increasingly indisposed expression. “I sawed two dragons at King’s Landing, circling each other… It felted so real!”

“That’s enough, Tyrion. There are dragons no more-”

“Then Cersei and Jaime appeared and they wered dragons! You wered a dragon too!”

Joanna froze, trapped in a spell Tyrion had unknowingly cast on her. _You are a dragon_ , she heard her own thoughts say, _you gave birth to dragons_ , and she knew it to be true. Cersei and Jaime had always looked hauntingly beautiful, capable of charming lower lords and ladies even as they misbehaved horribly. They chased after what they wanted- and it was true for Joanna too. She had wanted Tywin and had been willing to cast her family aside if it meant she could tie him to her in marriage.

Tyrion tugged on her skirt. “Mother?”

She turned around and crouched to look at her son on the same level. Tyrion gasped at the imperious steel shining in her eyes. “You will tell nobody else of your dreams from this moment on”, she ordered. “Only your father and me. Understood?”

Tyrion nodded vigorously, his pitiful frame trembling under the weight of her words.

“Good”, she stood up again and grasped his tiny hand. Tyrion had to stretch his arm all the way upward to reach his mother’s fingers. “It’s time for bed. I do not want to see you with a heraldry book in hand by the candlelight. Beds are for sleeping...”

\---

Lord Steffon Baratheon drowned within sight of Storm’s End when his ship Windproud was shaken by the waves and tossed against the cliffs, where it broke and shed all living beings into the angry sea. He died a senseless death, pushed by King Aerys’s wish to have a maiden of the blood of Valyria as the mother of Prince Rhaegal’s children.

Tywin wasn’t at Casterly Rock when the raven arrived. He was in King’s Landing, seeing his work being steadily eroded both by King Aerys and by mindless sycophants attempting to enter the king’s increasingly unstable graces. In the privacy of the Tower of Hand, Tywin raised a single cup to his childhood friend.

The wine tasted like bitter memories.

\---

Sooner than expected, Jaime’s time at House Brax was over. He returned an anointed knight, acclaimed by the people of King’s Landing, and welcomed to the Red Keep as the rightful heir of Casterly Rock and the Westerlands.

Then he attempted to bed Cersei in some hole of an inn, the name of which Tywin made no effort to learn, where she had disguised herself in rags far below her station of birth.

Joanna’s old warnings had never fully died in his ears. Any glance, any caress his oldest children exchanged threw him back to when Jaime was discovered in Cersei’s room at a scandalous hour. So he had men faultlessly loyal to House Lannister, who knew better than to spread vile tales of their betters, follow his firstborn son, hoping that his was merely a hunch brought upon by turbulent bowels.

To his shame, it wasn’t. To his fury, Jaime forced him into this discussion within King’s Landing, within the Red Keep, in the tower of the Hand, where no wall was free of Aerys’s paranoid shadow. Cersei, instead, he sent to her rooms under strict surveillance. There would be no moment in which she was left alone, for she no longer deserved his trust, not after he discovered she had organized this barely averted disaster.

“Jaime,” Tywin greeted him coldly while he retrieved a sheet of parchment from the pile. He dipped the beautiful golden pen into an inkpot and began to write. At no point he stopped to look at his son.

“Father-”

“Imagine my _mortification_ when I discovered my own children labouring to destroy everything I’ve dedicated my life to”, Tywin paused an instant, tore the paper in two, and picked another sheet. “Tell me. What would have been the benefit of deflowering your _twin sister_.”

“The Targaryens-”

“ _You are not Targaryens_ ,” Tywin managed to grind out without spitting, pinning Jaime to the chair with his glare alone. “You were born into House Lannister of Casterly Rock. You would do well to remember this once and for all.”

Jaime looked at him in the eye with his chin high, defiant. “Tyrion looks Targaryen enough to me.”

Tywin stood up abruptly, his armchair screeching against the floor as wrath made the veins of his forehead and neck pulse visibly under the skin. Jaime ducked his head then, so sure he was that his father was going to strike him for his tongue. Like any other time before, the blow didn’t come. Instead, as he cracked one of his eye open. Jaime watched in silence as Tywin clenched and unclenched his hands repeatedly until he sat back down.

“My entire life”, Tywin began tonelessly as he picked up the pen again. “My entire life, I vowed to make House Lannister the greatest of all houses of the Seven Kingdoms. I worked tirelessly to create a legacy unlike any other. I ignored continuous insults, japes, and jeering so that Cersei could become queen, and tie the Iron Throne to our family as House Martell has done.”

Jaime squirmed in his seat. He could have taken yells of anger. He could have smiled at bursts of fury. His father’s emotionless voice raised the hairs on his neck.

“I can’t look at you. The sight disgusts me”, Tywin took a pinch of fine ash from a small, golden box and spread it on the parchment. “You will go to your rooms and never leave them unless I give you explicit permission to do so. Any letter you write shall be read and approved by me first. You will start spending less time with a sword in your hand and more time learning how to be the Lord of a great noble house. You will marry Lysa Tully and father proper heirs. You will not contact your sister nor attempt to arrange any meeting that is not supervised by me, or I shall give her to the Silent Sisters. You may leave now.”

Jaime gaped aghast. “She’s your daughter-”

“She was to squander her maidenhead to satiate her sordid lusts,” Tywin interrupted him abruptly, raising his voice just enough to cover Jaime’s outburst. “She’s fortunate that you weren’t discovered by a malicious party seeking to destroy House Lannister, and that my men stopped you before you could defile her marriage prospects. You have your orders. Leave.”

Jaime opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, and closed it once more. Without a further word, he turned around and left the chamber.

Alone in the rooms of the Hand of the King, Tywin’s shoulders relaxed minutely. Fury and shame only his weak father had managed to evoke raged inside him, at the final proof that his children wallowed in sleazy squalor, the kind that unmade Houses and cast perpetual ridicule on the family name. Of the two, however, Cersei was the one who held most of his revulsion. She had been the catalyst of all this stupidity because she wished to bed her twin brother whilst being somehow married to the future King. It had never entered her brain that such actions would cast doubt on the paternity of any child she birthed when she was discovered. Tywin had no more intentions to amend the damage caused by her immaturity and hotheadedness.

He read the letter again. There wasn’t a noble house in the Westerlands who would reject to wed their heir to the daughter of their liege lord. He had discussed matters with Joanna before, and she had firmly agreed with him. Cersei would either correct her shameful behaviour and serve the family as her duty dictated, or she would find herself deprived of any birthright she ever enjoyed.

\---

With the coveted possibility of sitting his blood on the Iron Throne now impossible, there was far less honour and reward in serving a madman and his fickle offspring. Despite the King resisting his attempt at resigning while insulting him with the same breath, despite the court expressing their jubilation at seeing the lion being brought low, and despite discovering that Jaime and Cersei indulged in the same weakness that had plagued his father, Tywin Lannister finally felt at peace within the walls of Casterly Rock and in Joanna’s company. Let other fools empty their treasuries chasing Aerys’s erratic dreams, and spend their nights with a sour stomach once they realized they ruined themselves for nothing.

Already someone had decided to show their desire to wear motley. Lord Walter Whent had announced a tourney at Harrenhal, offering rewards that were three times those Tywin had posted during his celebration for the birth of Aerys’s second son. He had just pushed aside the scroll bearing such message when Tyrion showed himself in Tywin’s solar.

“Father?” Tyrion squeaked as he stood in front of his polished heavy wooden table, hands hiding behind his back and spine not fully straight. “I had a dream. One of... Those.”

Tywin didn’t raise his head to watch his youngest son. The pen in his hand moved swiftly from one side to another of the page. His orders to Stafford, Joanna’s brother, were not going to write themselves. “Was it a new one?”

Tyrion shook his head, then cleared his throat when he realized the mistake. “No, it was the one where the silver dragon kidnaps the female direwolf and flees toward the sun,” he wetted his lips and looked downwards. “I dream of it more and more often as days go by.”

Tywin stopped writing and cast a look of disapproval at his youngest son. He thought he had taught Tyrion not to waste his time with-

“I saw something else this time though,” Tyrion added hastily while he did his best not to wilt under his father’s glare. “The dragon returned to battle a mighty stag. No matter how fiercely he fought, the dragon was trampled beneath the stag’s hooves. And then...”

Tyrion gulped, blood suddenly fleeing his face.

“Then, a green dragon skull arose and devoured King’s Landing. The more it ate, the bigger it became, until nothing was left but bitter ashes scattered in the wind.”

The pen slipped from his fingers as if Tywin had been startled by an ear-splitting thunder had landed on Casterly Rock itself. He might as well have been, for he felt its crackling charring his insides.

In the past, Tywin would have dismissed it as a passing fancy of a child who compensated his deformities with flights of imagination. That was before Joanna had shared with him her suspicion. Before Jaime and Cersei had disappointed him so thoroughly.

“You have given me much to think about. You may leave.”

Tyrion obeyed immediately, remembering himself long enough not to slam the door behind him as he ran away as fast as his stunted legs allowed him to. Tywin frowned. He and Tyrion may not share a strong filial bond, but Tyrion was a Lannister of Casterly Rock, his blood, and not a lustful idiot. It wouldn’t do for him to behave like any other frightened servant.

\---

Lord Whent’s tourney came and went, displaying the full force of the royal dynasty; Aerys a decayed corpse who reeked from lack of proper bathing, and Rhaegar a halfwit who crowned a betrothed lady Queen of Love and Beauty instead of his wife, Princess Elia Martell. With a single act, Rhaegar had jeopardized the support he had secured from the other great houses and proved to be his father’s son.

Then, a year afterwards, knowledge of Lady Lyanna Stark’s kidnapping at the hands of Prince Rhaegar unfurled throughout Westeros. Lord Brandon Stark stormed the Red Keep, screaming for Rhaegar’s head on a platter, and he, his lord father, and other heirs of important Lords were executed for treason.

Rhaegar had sought to unite the Seven Kingdoms against his father’s madness. Now he showed to be tainted by the same stroke of insanity.

_The silver dragon kidnapped the female direwolf, and fled toward the sun._

Tyrion’s dragon dream rang undeterred in Tywin’s ears. He didn’t have Joanna’s instinct for resonating with their son’s visions, but that particular dream had tormented his sleep too. He could hear its notes everywhere, like a minstrel playing a song full of shame and regrets from sunup to sundown in the Golden Gallery. He knew with uncanny certainty that King’s Landing and all within its walls would be naught but dust before the end of the rebellion.

What did displease him, however, was that he couldn’t fully concentrate on the war council. Already Stafford, Harys, and Kevan were looking at him expectantly after he had utterly failed to listen to their musings.

“Tywin?” Kevan asked, clearly worried.

“Call the banners,” Tywin said at last.

_The mighty stag trampled the silver dragon._

The stag was the sigil of House Baratheon; even the rocks knew that. With House Lannister by his side, Lord Robert would easily defeat the mad prince. Seeing such alliance, Lord Hoster would request that Lord Eddard inherit Lord Brandon’s betrothal oaths to his firstborn daughter Catelyn. Losing another marriage to the heir of another great house would probably kill the proud old man after Lysa Tully was found to have disgraced herself with the son of a hedge knight.

Once reports of Rhaegar’s death broke, so would the spirit of those who rose to obey the royal dynasty. Nobody would fight for a decrepit, insane man, nor a callow child still clinging to his mother’s skirt.

_A green dragon skull devoured King’s Landing._

It was the last part of Tyrion’s dream that never failed to drive Tywin’s breath from his lungs. Wildfire, the substance House Targaryen had supplanted their reign with since the death of their last dragon, was known to produce green, unquenchable flames; it eluded the control of Lords and Kings alike and had been said to be a close relative to dragonfire. Rumours had gotten out of the King’s increased use of Wildfire, but Tywin had thought not even Aerys could be so maddened.

If the fool prince’s death didn’t deter the fools drunk on empty loyalty, the destruction of King’s Landing would.

“No matter what happens, no one is to enter King’s Landing,” Tywin declared firmly, raising his voice above whatever his council was bickering about. “Belay that, no one is to approach the city. Anybody who disobeys this order is to be severely punished. Understood?”

As expected, he was met with bewildered stares, but accept his words they did.

\---

Aerys watched the ants scuttling and fretting from one door to another below him, below the Iron Throne. He sneered. Useless, they were useless and treacherous, the lot of them. None of them wore sigils or the colours of noble Houses, not even those of the Crownlands, in spite of all the ravens that arrived at the rookery and the reassurances they carried. The droppings the ravens laid everywhere were more truthful than his vassals’ allegiance.

Joanna. His beautiful Joanna. So much more capable than useless Rhaella, who had only been good at miscarrying or giving birth to traitors and stillborns. Joanna would have been a magnificent queen. Joanna would have given him strong sons and daughters. Joanna would have stood with him against the treacherous snakes seeking to snatch the throne for themselves.

He cursed Tywin for taking Joanna from him. He cursed Rhaella for exiling the only woman Aerys had ever loved. He cursed his father for forcing him to marry his worthless sister on the words of a _dwarf_. He cursed Joanna, too, for refusing his hand despite being more of a dragon than Rhaella could ever hope to be. Aerys wouldn’t have made her a lowly mistress, but she hadn’t believed him.

His ancestors had always refused to entwine their blood with that of the gold of Casterly Rock for a reason. One only needed to look at the perverted offspring of such an abominable union to witness the truth. The memory of those twisted creatures being paraded before him made his blood boil, especially the little waddling beast Tywin had tried hard to hide from him.

Yet, Tywin had married Joanna and strangled Aerys’s legacy in the womb. He had been left with a backstabber of an heir and only a frail, dornish pretender as a prospective bride. All he had gotten were grandchildren who looked like any other peasant from Flea Bottom, a kingdom that could barely field an army outside of their vaunted deserts, and a dead fool of a son.

Rossart, the only person he could trust since Tywin’s betrayal, stood at the feet of the throne, boredom clouding his sight. Anything that wasn’t Wildfire failed to keep his interest. That was the second reason Aerys had chosen him as his Hand. Unlike his predecessors, Rossart hatched no scheme to accrue more power for himself and his unworthy offspring, and he didn’t sabotage Aerys’s orders. As long as he could produce and store Wildfire, Rossart did everything he was ordered.

Everyone else wouldn’t have. Qarlton, Jon, Owen, Tywin- all acted as if they knew better than him. The King! They spoke of allegiance when they plotted when his back was turned. They wished to climb over his cooling corpse and coronate themselves with his ancestors' crown.

Just like the rebels pounding at his doors. Just like his waste of a get. _Just like everybody else in the Seven Kingdoms._

If they wanted his throne so badly… If they wanted his crown so badly...

“Open the gates!” he shouted.

The sludge looked at him like the dumb goats they were.

“Open the gates,” he repeated, then turned to Rossart with a hideous grin. “When they’re inside, ignite the trap.”

They could

choke

_on it_

__

__

_and **BURN!**_

\---

_A green dragon skull arose and devoured King’s Landing. The more it ate, the bigger it became, until nothing was left but bitter ashes scattered in the wind._

**Author's Note:**

> I attempted to continue beyond the destruction of King's Landing, but I had already lost steam by then. There were going to be other big changes like Jon Arryn dying in King's Landing and Eddard Stork losing an arm and falling into a coma among others, but oh well. A few sections could have been polished some more, I admit.
> 
> I have a version of this "What If" that has Joanna die in childbirth too, though it's less than half complete. Time will tell if I'll ever finish writing it.


End file.
